The “dog ate my homework” excuses are getting lamer by the day. Someone in Utah used a Salt Lake City TV website’s classifieds section to buy a gun from someone else in Utah. WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH NEW YORK CITY? Michael Bloomberg is so loath to blame his city’s violence on people that could vote for him to be Mayor that he blames it on people in Virginia, Tennessee and Utah. I heard that Abos in Tennant Creek, NT, Australia like to shoot boomerangs with air rifles — Don’t tell Bloomberg, or he’ll bitch about that.

Mysteriously, it took more than a day after the caucuses closed for Clark County (Las Vegas et al.) to report all its results, thereby completing Nevada’s results.

There were 44,324 caucus votes cast in 2008 among Republicans, while there were only 32,894 cast this year. That continues the trend of states that are well known Romney wins having lower turnouts than four years ago. And Nevada is a swing state, too — Not a pleasing trend for Republicans heading toward November.

Ron Paul got 6,087 votes, 13.73%, 2nd Place, in 2008. While he slightly improved his raw vote total (6,175), and somewhat improved his percentage take (18.77%), he didn’t finish in 2nd Place. (I’m guessing all the Sands employees got the memo from the Top Floor to go caucus for Gingrich or else.) So far, Nevada has represented his worst “improvement” over four years ago. Of course, Nevada was one of his very best states early in the 2008 primary and caucus season, (his big numbers in later primaries and caucuses, after McCain wrapped it up, are the political equivalent of garbage time touchdowns in football), so it would have been hard to come up with a quadruple improvement like he did in South Carolina. And, he won two Nevada counties compared to the one he won four years ago, the common county being Nye, the home of Art Bell and Front Sight.

But other than that, there’s no sugar coating finishing behind someone who spent almost no money in Nevada.

What could explain? CofCC took the words out of my mouth. All of his racial pandering to blacks and Hispanics to overcompensate for the newsletter “controversy” is turning into a buzzkill.

One more thing: In spite of Las Vegas having a significant Jewish population, including a big Gingrich backer in the person of Sheldon Adelson, according to CNN’s exit polling, only 2% of caucus goers were Jewish.

Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the second-place finisher in MI-GOV-R in 2010, is running for Senate this year to try to replace Debbie Stabenow. He had a Super Bowl ad featuring a young Asian woman speaking broken English.

LANSING, Mich.—A coalition of black ministers in Detroit called Monday for U.S. Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra to apologize for his Super Bowl ad featuring a young Asian woman speaking broken English to describe the impact of the Democratic incumbent’s economic policies.

Hmmm. What if this young woman opened a convenience store in Detroit? And eventually…